Page:History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella the Catholic Vol. II.djvu/440

414 41 'I. XIMENES. PART II. amounting to many thousands, ^^ he consigned to indiscriminate conflagration. ^^ This melancholy auto da fe^ it will be recollect- ed, was celebrated, not by an unlettered barbarian, but by a cultivated prelate, who was at that very time actively employing his large revenues in the publication of the most stupendous literary work of the age, and in the endowment of the most learned university in Spain. ^^ It took place, not in the darkness of the middle ages, but in the dawn of the sixteenth century, and in the midst of an en- lightened nation, deeply indebted for its own pro- gress to these very stores of Arabian wisdom. It forms a counterpart to the imputed sacrilege of Omar,^^ eight centuries before, and shows that bigotry is the same in every faith, and every age. 21 According to Robles, (Rebe- lion de Morisos, p. 104.) and the Suma de la Vida de Cisneros, 1,005,000; to Conde, (El Nu- biense, Descripcion d'Espaila, p. 4, note,) 80,000 ; to Gomez and others 5,000. There are scarcely any data for arriving at probability in this monstrous discrepancy. The famous library of the Ommeyades at Cordova was said to contain 600,000 volumes. It had long since been dissipated ; and no similar collection had been attempted in Granada, where learning was never in that palmy state which it reach- ed under the Cordovan dynasty. Still, however, learned men were to be found there, and the Moorish metropolis would naturally be the depository of such literary treasures as had escaped the general ship- wreck of time and accident. On the whole, the estimate of Gomez would appear much too small, and that of Robles as disproportionate- ly exaggerated. Conde, better in- structed in Arabic lore than any of his predecessors, may be found, perhaps, here, as elsewhere, the best authority. 22 Gomez, De Rebus Gestis, lib. 2, fol. 30. — Marmol, Rebelion de Moriscos, lib. 1, cap. 25. — Ro- bles, Vida de Ximenez, cap. 14. — Sunia de la Vida de Cisneros. MS. — Quintanilla, Archetypo, p. 58. 2y Yet the archbishop might find some countenance for his fanati- cism, in the most polite capital of Europe. The faculty of Theolo- gy in Paris, some few years later, declared "que e'en etait fait de la religion, si on permettait T^tude du Grec et de I'Hebreu ! " Villers, Essai sur I'Esprit et ITnfluence de la Reformation de Luther, (Paris, 1820,) p. 64, note. -^ Gibbon's argument, if it does not shake tlie foundations of the whole story of the Alexandrian conflagration, may at least raise a